SpeakinSpell

141 - Default to NO sayings

Have the default set to No sayings instead of having some set to run automatically.

Please provide any additional information below.

There are some of the sayings that I do not want and/or can be very inappropriate if not used when intended and they are ones that I did not select in the setup.

An example of this would be the Paladin Lay on Hands, Hand of Freedom, etc. speeches. I was healing in a pug and those messages popped up (I had not set them). I was extraordinarily embarrassed and had to apologize profusely to the tank to whom they were whispered.

I also had to go through an disable ones for when I got on a mount, put down food, etc. - many other things.

Perhaps you could have a list w/ check boxes or some such for those speeches that you have set to run as default. That way people could choose if they want them or not. For myself, the only ones I want to use are the rez speeches.

It has come to my attention recently that the default speeches are MUCH more spammy than I intended. 2 people in my guild installed SpeakinSpell recently, and I started using it on a new character, and... WHOA OMG what did I do?? Talking to NPCs, exiting combat, and so many other triggers are active that are supposed to be OPTIONAL content packs that aren't supposed to be used by default for new installs... but they are.

This paladin friend of mine is the worst I've seen of it... I don't even know what's making him talk 6 times during every combat. I don't remember defining that many paladin spell triggers, especially for heal spells, and I don't even recognize half his speeches to tell him what's triggering those...

But it's pretty clear that I have a bug in the system related to this, where some recent changes apparently made it start pulling in EVERYTHING, and it's only supposed to use about 20% of those.

It's something I broke recently and I originally opened up this ticket today to note that and increase the priority because i want to fix this for the next release.

My intent with the defaults is to provide the following enabled speeches by default for a new install (or a new character):

3 spell triggers for your class with min 10 speeches each, preferably for out-of-combat spells, or spells with >= 2 min cooldowns (also limited to once per combat in most cases).

guild achievement grats

"/congrats" or "/cheer" for people near you who get achievements

battle cries linked to "/ss macro battlecry" for manual activation off a button in your action bar (i.e. for boss fights and answering readychecks), also set to a VERY low random chance and long cooldown to trigger automatically upon entering combat (because entering and exiting combat are frequently triggered at undesirable times: think zombies in culling of strat)

death cries

summoning stones

fishing (on a low random chance, and this needs more speeches, plus the highly-voted feature request for "whoa, that's a big one!")

... and that's it!

People have sent me A LOT more speeches over the years, and I think most of them look really great on paper, but I personally find it way too spammy to use all that content at the same time.

I include everything anyone sends me in SpeakinSpell_Defaults, because I want it to serve as inspiration and I want to make the content available, but most of those aren't supposed to be activated by default - they're supposed to sit there unused until you "/ss import" them... so there's a bug in the system that's turning on way more of these than I intended.

There are 2 main changes recently which may have each broken this in some way

splitting out the default content into the separate SpeakinSpell_Defaults load-on-demand module may have broken some of the related logic, and caused it to think that optional content packs should be used even though they don't say "selected=true" in them

adding tons more speeches from RPHelper2, most of which are RP-style and linked to the race of your toon, to make you talk like a dwarf or elf, etc.

Speeches I have seen used by default even though I didn't intend it include:

exiting combat

talking to NPCs

excessive paladin healer spell announcements in combat... I'm not sure which spells at this point

I'm not sure what else exactly, but that's enough to merit a thorough review of what and how much is enabled by default.

That defect is up for a high priority repair for the next release, along with a thorough review of all the defaults... and that makes it very tempting to take an easy way out and go with your original suggestion to default to NO speeches and just make it a non-issue.

... but that Paladin I mentioned above... has been running SS for a couple of weeks now and never took the time to edit the default settings - at all - and also just turned it off like you did... so if it defaults to nothing, then I wouldn't expect him to take the time to write or import any speeches either... which is the crux of the problem for what and how much to enable by default.

The specific Lay on Hands speech you mentioned is the spoof on the song "When I think about you I touch myself" right? Yeaaah... I should just remove that one from the defaults along with some of the other sexual innuendo, insult humor, drug references, and otherwise potentially offensive or non-politically-correct speeches... I like a lot of the edgy ones, but i try to keep my personal taste separate from the defaults to some degree... which is again, one of the main tricks to balancing what and how much to enable by default.

It's worth noting too: I don't use the whisper target option for any of my speeches anymore, but that's still default behavior for the rez speeches. I am leaning towards also disabling that option in the default settings. (That's also related to the incident that sparked the OP over whispering to a teenage boy about Lay on Hands)

On the tree view, I wanted to note that I never found an appropriate widget in WoW-Lua or Ace libraries for a checkable treeview... the current implementation of "/ss import" is an attempt to approximate a tree view with cascading drop-down lists and group boxes, and it kinda fails.

Now that SS options live outside the blizzard options frame, I have more flexibility to use the tree control area on the left (where you can select between the different options windows) and dynamically change it... so I'm thinking Message Settings, Create New, and Import will all become their own separate windows, and use that tree control area on the left to list the event triggers in tree groups

I'd prefer to include checkboxes in the tree control, but I've never seen an addon that does that, so it seems unsupported within the limitations of a WoW addon... that's one of the things that makes me sometimes consider making a stand-alone editor that I'd write in C+ + because I have so much more experience and expertise at C+ + Windows programming...

Anyway now I'm just rambling LOL

(for future reference to give context to all the critiques above, the current version is SS 4.0.3.05)

Thanks so much for looking into this. I just wanted to add a couple of comments. I really love this addon - it is one of my favorites.

First of all, I did try the "erase all" option. That function, however, erases both the speeches AND the event triggers. I would have loved to had the event triggers stay and then be able to add my custom speeches.

Second, there are just SO many extraneous speeches on by default for the most minute things. Having to pull up the /ss recent and disabling the options is way too time consuming, in my opinion, especially as these things are literally popping up - in chat :-) - when I am trying to lead a raid, etc.

At the moment, I have disabled the addon in game. :-( I really hate to have to do that. I really enjoy making up new rez sayings (or modifying some of the defaults). They definitely entertain the crowds. People are always asking what addon it is, so hopefully they are finding their way here, too.

And, FYI, I should have mentioned that my example in the original post that the tank on the receiving end of the speeches was not just a pug, but was also a 14 or 15 year old boy. If you check out the defaults for those events, I think you will see why I /blushed with shame. LOL

I like your suggestion of the tree-view list of events and triggers. It would be nice to be able to select/deselect an overall event to disable all of the triggers within or to be able to easily pick and choose. It would be nice to extend that further to have check boxes for the speeches, but that would likely be very tedious for you to set up. I know that I would be happy with just being able to pick and choose the event.

Sorry that I couldn't get all of this in the first post. I am rarely at a loss for words, but often at a loss for time! :-)

I downloaded TriviaBot recently and found that they package the trivia questions as a totally separate download. I'm considering that approach for SpeakinSpell.

That design was clearly intended to encourage others to produce compatible content packs. I'd like people to do that for SpeakinSpell, and I think it has some fan users who would do it if it were easy enough... but I think setting up and distributing whole plugin Load-on-demand addons is asking too much of non-programmers... but I also think it would provide the opportunity to include custom functionality, like new <substitutions> and event triggers.

Power Auras is another data-driven addon, and I noticed it did nothing "out of the box" and I had to do some digging around to find the Power Auras Forum, which led me to their import/export utility. Power Auras enables users to setup the options for how to show various events visually (instead of in text like SS) and their import/export tool lets you export an event's settings to a text string, copy-paste it to the forum to share, and someone else (me, the new user) could copy-paste it back into the addon.

I'd like to continue including content in the basic download. It's easy to load-on-demand to save memory in-game on unused content, and downloading an extra MB only takes a few seconds on broadband.

However, I agree with the OP that users should be given a more visible choice about it.

I also want to add a requirement here that data sharing should be easier, something like the way TriviaBot or Power Auras allow for third-party custom content packs to be shared around.

I'd like to take the templates system and integrate it more into the EventTable

All this stuff is loosely related to the topic of the OP. The original plan is still the best short-term approach IMO.

The community seems to be split on this issue... some people want to start from nothing and add speeches, while if it does nothing when first installed, others are confused why this new addon they installed is not having any effect.

I've been reluctant to bring up a setup window the first time you install SpeakinSpell, to force you to choose whether or not to bring in any defaults, but I think it's becoming necessary.

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My plan is to give you a few choices the first time SS runs

1) "start with some usable sample speeches for your race and class, and review them later" - the current behavior (4.1.3.01)

2) "start with some usable sample speeches for your race and class and review them now" - the current behavior, followed by opening "/ss messages"

3) "start from a clean slate and add event triggers and speeches later" - same as running "/ss eraseall" right after installing the current version (4.1.3.01)

4) "start from a clean slate and browse available content packs now" - same as "/ss eraseall" followed by "/ss import"

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The other half of the suggestion hinges on improving both the "/ss messages" and "/ss import" interfaces to be more usable, with a tree-view style list of checkboxes. I think these can be treated as separate tasks.

7 comments

Facts

Last updated

Jan 16, 2013

Reported

Nov 21, 2010

Status

Accepted - Problem reproduced / Need acknowledged.

Type

Enhancement - A change which is intended to better the project in some way